All I can say is FLEE NOW! Because of the most recent horror story concerning GoDaddy, I decided to quickly and quietly transfer my domains to NameCheap.
What happened?
An Internet marketer had his account suspended by GoDaddy because of a spam complaint. The spam didn’t come from him — it came from an unknown third party.
GoDaddy promptly shut down his domain (NOT the website… the freakin domain!) and sent the following email…
Go Daddy has a strict anti-spam policy, Go Daddy customers are required to be able to provide conclusive proof of prior consent for any individual they send advertisements to. This also applies to the actions of any party that generates traffic on your behalf. This includes, but is not limited to, 3rd party marketers, business partners, employees, mailing list providers and affiliates.
Once the troubled marketer posted in the forum, other marketers with similar GoDaddy horror stories came out of the woodwork.
What did I learn?
1. It only takes one spam *complaint* to have your domain suspended by GoDaddy. There doesn’t need to be proof.
2. Once GoDaddy locks and suspends your account, you are billed $200 in administration fees in order to unlock and/or move to another registrar.
3. GoDaddy has suspended and sold high value domain names, for invalid whois information. Specifically an email address — without trying to contact using any other means.
4. If there is problem, don’t expect a phone call from ‘customer no-service’!
5. GoDaddy verifies ‘whois’ information using the domain SecureServer.net. One domain owner received an email originating from that domain and ignored it not knowing it was GoDaddy — which seems resonable given all the phishing scams. However, his site was shut down.
And don’t think this is an isolated incident. It has happened repeatedly…
Ask Mike Filsaime what he thinks about GoDaddy.com and you will get an earful!
Like other Internet marketers, I have already moved my most valuable domains to NameCheap and made the ‘whois’ info private as another layer of protection. Maybe you should do the same.
Further Reading: More GoDaddy Horror Stories at NoDaddy.com
PS: If you use Twitter you can link your NameCheap account to receive notices as Tweets! Very cool! You’ll find that option under My Account > Manage Profile > Twitter Integration.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Sounds like great advice. I hate to air it here, but blackhat ops / competitors may use this tactic to shut us down too!
Absolutely Jerry! Your best bet is to use something like Whoisguard which is FREE with domain transfer.
If assholes don’t know who you are, it makes it harded to steal the domain.